WHY YOUR BRAND NEEDS ‘GOOGLE MY BUSINESS’ TOOL PRONTO!

Think back to an early age, like right when human beings came into existence. The Early Man. He only needed certain basic elements to survive. Hunting, farming (at a later stage), and eating, that’s pretty much all it was about. His food too only had certain staples that he would consume. Obviously, times have changed a lot since then, but the modern human being still has his/her staples as far as his/her daily lifestyle is concerned. Also, it would be only fair to say that of these staples, GOOGLE is a major component.

Be it for recreational, personal, professional, or commercial purposes, most of us resort to Google to seek solutions. ‘Googling something or someone’ has become a common phrase that we use casually and frequently in our daily lives. Hence, if you are a business owner, it is only natural that you resort to Google to help increase brand awareness, boost sales, and reach out to more potential customers. And that’s where ‘Google My Business’ comes in. Intrigued to find out more? Read on!

WHAT IS ‘GOOGLE MY BUSINESS’?

‘Google My Business‘ is a free and easy-to-use tool by Google that helps brands and businesses to manage their online presence via Google. This includes extensions such as Google Maps and Google Search. By creating a Business Profile, brand owners can verify their businesses and have a presence on Google. Customers can then find these businesses and interact with them.

WHY SHOULD BUSINESSES USE IT?

This service is free. Well, that isn’t exactly the reason you were looking for, right? Well, that isn’t why we’d recommend it either! As we said before, Google has become a staple for people in today’s day and age. So, having a prominent presence on it can only help your brand. Here’s how brands can benefit with this extension.

1. VISIBILITY & ACCESS VIA GOOGLE SEARCH & MAPS

When people search for your brand on Google in the Search tab, you gain increased visibility. Add to that the advantage of being located on Google Maps and you have a strong local presence for customers who are searching for a business that is near their location. While people strongly consider online reviews as an important tool to evaluate the credibility of a business, the accessibility & proximity of a location also plays an important role. By simply creating a ‘Google My Business’ listing and completing the verification steps, your store location will start to pop up for local searches as well.

2. GETTING FEATURED IN GOOGLE’S LOCAL 3 PACK

The Local Pack is the section in Google search results pages that displays businesses relevant to the searcher’s geographical location. This service is aimed towards creating a hyperlocal and ultimately, more convenient and efficient experience for the users, giving them search results that are close to their location and displaying them first and on the very top of the search results. While 7 local results used to be displayed earlier, the number has now dwindled down to 3. It’s highly important for businesses to be featured in this Local 3 Pack. One way to get a listing in this 3 Pack, apart from a strong SEO rank, good online content, and a good website, is having your business listed in Google’s My Business feature.

3. EARNING A CUSTOMER’S TRUST

Google has been a reliable and tried and tested tool for a lot of people. The people trust it. Trust also happens to be an important factor when it comes to closing a sale for a brand. One way to build this trust is to ensure complete transparency with a My Business listing. By providing a location, photos of its store/product/service, genuine reviews, operational hours and other such details, a brand can make itself transparent and consequently, trustable for its customers. In fact, brands that show up on Google are 2.7 times more likely to be considered reputable by consumers. This is also because of the thorough screening process a brand undergoes to be registered on My Business. The multiple verification steps that need to be completed to be listed ensures a comfortable environment of trust is built around your brand automatically.

4. SCOPE FOR ANALYSIS AND APPRECIATION THROUGH REVIEWS

A happy customer makes for a happier brand. A credible and/or positive review or testimonial of a brand’s product/service by a single customer can be supremely influential and helpful for its other prospective customers. In fact, you dear reader, while you are reading this, might be smiling and thinking about the last time you depended on credible reviews about a product/service that you sought from other users before making a purchase! Moreover, constructive criticism via some not-so-favorable reviews can help the brand analyze and rectify the shortcomings of customer’s faces while interacting with it. Prompt communication and a quick addressal of these shortcomings help immensely in improving customer relations. Such analysis, combined with a consistently high quality of service, will also help a brand to achieve a good overall Star Rating. This Star Rating gives it a pivotal competitive edge, especially when it is competing with several other local competitors.

5. INCREASED ONLINE TRAFFIC AND SALES

All said and done, Sales is the most important factor for any brand. For a steadily soaring sales graph, a consistent influx of customers, and a healthy flow of traffic on a brand’s website is needed. While every brand will face certain ups and down with regards to the online and foot traffic throughout the year, a My Business does tend to help generate a boost in sales overall.

Just by having a listing and showing up in local searches, Google has found that businesses are as much as 70% more likely to attract location visits from browsing potentials. An even more impressive figure revealed that customers who find a brand through their Google My Business listing are up to 50% more likely to make a purchase.

6. THE ADVANTAGE OF ANALYTICS

Every brand needs to understand its customers and the nature of its functioning from time to time. This is helpful for its vertical growth. With the analytics provided in the ‘Insights’ section in their My Business profile, a brand can gauge its visibility, determine its target audience more effectively, and see its rate of engagement with its customers. By getting a better understanding of their customers’ psyche and the performance of their products/services over a period of time, the brand can then modify and improve its marketing strategy.

So, there you have it. If you are a brand who’s been planning to enter or is entering the digital space, especially considering the Corona pandemic, here’s a potent and easy to use tool for you to utilize and capitalize on. Make the most of what it has to offer. Come, hop on to the My Business bandwagon!

Have we got you convinced about the effectiveness of Google My Business? Then allow us to help you understand it better and execute it for your brand. For a comprehensive setup of ‘My Business’ for your brand, you can ‘Google our business‘ or reach out to us on contact@gdcs.online and we’ll get the ball rolling for you!